Dressed to Kill - Brian DePalma - What does this scene mean?

[Clay313]

I think she was so shocked of what the stranger did to her in the taxi cab that she was looking around to see what neighborhood the guy was taking her to...And my opinion the taxi cab scene is the sexiest scene in movie history, I still have fantasies of doing a woman like that.

[gvt2u]

Yes, I know what it means. Dickinson's character is a bit freaked out being hustled into the building, not quite sure she should be going in with the man. She looks to the doorman, who is busy directing a moving company's personnel, thinking that if she needed to be rescued in any way, there was nobody around to help her before she ended up in the man's apartment. But the crux of the scene is that it establishes that the doorman did not see her enter the building before she was murdered.

[JetMechMA]

@gvt2u Bingo !

[toughguypete]

I wondered the exact same thing when I first saw it, as it seemed out of place. But after repeated viewing, you can see Dr. Elliot (or at least someone who looks like him,) turn the corner

[egglady]

I think it's meant to convey her paranoia at being in a strange place with a man she doesn't know. She was checking to make sure nobody she knew was walking down the street as she went in the building.

[MrMikeman1970]

I wondered that too. But I actually read the script. I worked better on paper. Apparently, she was looking at the doorman who was away from his station to help out with the new tenant. She was paranoid of being caught with another man that's why she was looking the way she did.

[DANATANLOVER]

I too find this scene odd, and find it hard to belive that a director as meticulous as De Palma would stick it in there without some deeper meaning, but I'm at a loss as to what that meaning may be.

[Suedeheadlover]

Probably just learning that her building has a new tenant. Just a hunch.